


Custom Built Soldier

by Churbooseanon



Series: Starlight Challenges [4]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 05:17:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3516785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wasn't born this way. He was shaped to be the soldier he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Custom Built Soldier

**Author's Note:**

> For Starlight Challenge Prompt for February 23rd: Darkness cannot drive out darkness.

Success is learned in the little lessons. Tiny steps that drag you forward with each day. Tiny victories that allow you to keep moving unhurt, unnoticed, unbroken.

Not unbowed. 

When you trip and spill hot coffee all over his legs, you learn to watch where you’re going. If you look before you step, you won’t trip. When you take too long to get there and the coffee has cooled too much, you learn to balance caution with speed. Learn the route on the way out and you have a better chance of making it back without mishap. 

Every morning is a new lesson. Every day a new pain. Polish the forks well, or he gets the belt. Take as little time on errands as possible or you’ll be accused of dallying. Again he goes for the belt. Don’t talk back unless you want a fist in your gut, across your face, doubling you over on your knees before you’re kicked. 

Obedience. Promptness. Flawless execution and careful planning. Follow orders to the letter. Survive to see the next day. 

Tell no one. Tell no one or you won’t survive. 

He gives you a final lesson too. The one that sticks with you the longest. Maybe the others are unconscious, are ingrained so deep that no amount of sanding down the wood of your being will drive them out, but none compares. 

Everyone has a breaking point. 

Yours is when you’re in high school. When another kid half destroys your most expensive textbook. You’ve already learned by then never to raise your hand to another person. It only gets you beat. Thick leather belt with the metal studs that jut out and cut into the bare skin of your back. You had bled for hours, ruining a shirt in the process. He beat you for that too. 

When you come home you show him the book, quietly tell him how much it will cost, start to explain…

Maybe you shouldn’t have done it while he was smoking. Maybe you should have given yourself more space to run. He’s always drunk this time of day and you can outrun him. You have places to hide. The beatings would be worse for it, but there wouldn’t be fire. But you don’t run. You don’t give him space. He grabs your hand, holds it in a strong grip, and you scream and fall to your knees and you can smell flesh burning.

When he lets you go you crawl away to tend to the wound. Slather it in cream. Wrap it with gauze. Go to his bedroom and take down the box on the high shelf that he thinks you haven’t noticed or maybe something else. You know where the bullets are too. Right in the chamber. Like hell he cared about your safety. 

He’s still drunk when you go out to the living room. The gun burns in your grip, screaming pain up your arm as it settles in the palm of your burned hand. You don’t care. You call his name, he looks, and for a moment you see the horror in his eyes. 

The horror doesn’t last long. Three holes in his chest will do that. You drop the gun. Grab your coat. Walk the five miles to the nearest recruitment outpost. They ask your name and you lie. What do they care? It’s a war where they need canon fodder. You’re willing to be stuffed down the barrel. 

When you go off, you intend to take as many Covvies as possible with you. He’s taught you many lessons, and you’re certain they’re suitable for war. They will be, you know it. Just mark him off as your first casualty. A retroactive order that got you to the desk, to signing up, to fighting the war you were made for. A custom built soldier, just for the UNSC. 

And are you ever a perfect soldier.


End file.
